I have no desire to relive my youth – I’m happy being older!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Woke up this mornin’

’N I was fifty seven.

Said I woke up this mooor-orrr-nin’

’N I was fifty seven.

Not sent to hell yet…

Not made it to heaven…

I got those what does my birthday mean bluuuuues…..”

While in his prime, that supreme athlete, prophet and all round wonderful guy Muhammad Ali famously said that age was a state of mind. As he struggled through the mighty challenges presented by Parkinson’s syndrome, he kept his smile, his personality and his philosophy of life intact.

On a less testing and more personal plain, that’s what I’ve been trying to do for the last six years.

Life in your fifties is a very mixed bag. Just as TV ads seem to encourage women to parachute out of helicopters and go white water rafting during their periods, we fifty-somethings are coerced by an endless torrent of super-healthy white-teethed mini-celebs to go out there and seize the day, because apparently the fifties are the new thirties.

Really?

Nu-huh. Don’t think so. In my early thirties I arrived in Galway City, fully believing my partying days were behind me. City pubs, Salthill clubs and an excellent team of reprobates who lured me into local life put paid to that.

Dancing my thirty-something arse off at night I felt no pain. First thing the next morning I’d pummel Salthill Prom at high speed, enjoying a sad kind of pride in the way nobody passed me.

A few years later I moved to Connemara, where I wrote, walked, exercised and walked some more. Push-ups, Tai Chi and three walks a day. Admittedly, the final one was to and from the pub.

I’m only human.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.